In China, Tencent and Alipay have 16m and 350m registered users of their online payment services. Emerging markets are hot favourites for growth in consumers using mobile wallets and mobile payments which can now be used for online payment.

Alternative payment methods are growing and featuring relative to credit and debit cards for millennials and emerging markets like Africa. Whilst PayPal is the most dominant solution globally, each emerging market country has its own unique dominant alternative payment method.

Wallets are easy for consumers – they register, receive an SMS to validate themselves, an account is opened for them and it has various ways to top it up which lean towards the most popular financial services in the particular user location. This as compared to a 40 day camel march to get a bank account.

Then it comes down to use. If the wallet is not widely acceptable or usable for the niche that the user intends, then it is not going to experience high adoption rates. M-Pesa in Kenya was extremely successful because it was initially not regulated and funding was received to ensure that it was easy to top it up and is was acceptable everywhere.

In the developed world, dominant mobile payment participants like PayPal, Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay are working on their network of retailers who accept their form of payment and making sure it is easy to top up. Everyone has a phone in their hand so it makes sense to use it to pay.

This is the benefit of marrying telcos and financial services. Turn the mobile into a payment device. Safaricom via M-Pesa turned 20m of the almost 40m population with mobiles into transacting consumers who could send money to each other and buy things.

Now, multinationals integrated to African Payment Solutions are linked for accepting M-Pesa online payment on their websites by Kenyan consumers.